D3 Mouse/Headset Play Test

Posted By: June 8, 2011

Since we’re grinding through another slow (no) news week waiting on Bashiok to surface or another system to be revealed, here’s a bit more about the new Diablo III Steelseries peripherals. A writer for PC World got to try them out at E3, and he shares a bit of detail about his trial, as well as revealing their prices, which are not yet listed on the Steelseries page. It’ll set you back $70 for the mouse and $120 for the headset.

The company says the SteelSeries Diablo III Mouse ($70) is guaranteed for up to 10 million clicks (which they claim is three times the click lifespan of an average mouse). And no, you don’t have to keep count yourself—the mouse’s cross-platform driver software actually keeps track of those clicks, complete with a heat map to show you which of the seven buttons are getting more work than others. The driver software actually lets you set different profile settings for different Diablo III character classes, too, so you don’t have to worry about reconfiguring your mouse each time you want to switch characters.

While I wasn’t able to try the mouse out in Diablo III (it’s not out yet), I did get to play around a little bit in World of Tanks with it. While it felt light compared to my Razer Naga, the Diablo III’s buttons felt responsive and fairly easy to hit, and the click sound was slightly muted compared to other gaming mice. The latter is something which might turn off the gamers looking for a deep, satisfactory clicking sound, but anyone in the immediate vicinity of those gamers probably will appreciate the relative quiet.

Use one of the 3.3 million clicks your mouse will die to deliver unto you in order to visit the PCWorld article for play test info about the headset as well.

Just out of curiosity, what sort of mouse are you guys using? How many of you have custom gaming-designed mice with extra side buttons and such? Special surface mousepads like Steelseries sells? Who uses wireless, and does anyone still use a non-laser mouse? Any trackballers out there?